


Five Times Ichabod Crane Listened to Music, and One Time He Didn’t

by errata



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Mentions of Katrina Crane, Music, Welcome To The 21st Century Mr. Crane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 21:17:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1402726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/errata/pseuds/errata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ichabod adjusts to the twenty-first century and learns a little about music history in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Ichabod Crane Listened to Music, and One Time He Didn’t

**1.[Four Contredanses, KV. 267](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEsvNDabbfo) – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart**

The modern age is a marvel. People light their homes and cook their meals with the power of electricity. They speak to people on the other side of the globe in an instant. They travel in hours what once took months. And yet these same people have all but destroyed the natural world and have lost sight of much that the people of his age held dear. Ichabod’s been known to pontificate about it all, loudly, at length, and occasionally in public.

When Ichabod has a particularly upsetting day, whether it’s because the world has grown too overwhelming, because someone else has been killed by the harbingers of the apocalypse, or because he’s snatched another moment with Katrina and misses her the more, he retreats to the late sheriff’s cabin and his memories. 

It’s pleasant, stretching out on the couch, with a disc in the CD player, listening to music he remembers and imagining himself at a ball with Katrina at his side. 

This is how Abbie finds him when she comes in with news of a dead woman, her torso showing unnatural lesions which may or may not be sigils.

**2.[Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, Fourth Movement](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDViACDYxnQ) – Ludwig van Beethoven**

It’s Advent—not Advent as they celebrate it now, before even All Hallows’ Eve, but truly, properly Advent—and the police station is displaying its Christmas spirit with tinsel and boughs of evergreen made of the ubiquitous plastic. Ichabod walks past Captain Irving’s door one morning to see the man looking through a case file, a “Santa hat” on his head and humming to music. Oh, the music! A choir of voices sometimes in harmony, sometimes pursuing their own melodies, but always keeping to the themes of joy and brotherhood and Heaven, if his German is accurate. Is this a more modern form of oratorio, perhaps? He’d thought in this age of electric guitars and hip-hop that the form had fallen out of favour.

Ichabod crosses quickly to Abbie’s desk. “Miss Mills?”

“What, Crane?”

“The song that Captain Irving is listening to. What is it?”

Abbie blinks at him a moment, then shakes out of it. “Ode to Joy,” she says. “The Captain says it’s more seasonal than what’s on the radio. I guess it was after your time, huh?”

“Undoubtedly,” Ichabod agrees. “Would you assist me in procuring it so I may listen at my leisure?”

“Procure it yourself.”

He does, and more Beethoven besides.

**3.[Basin Street Blues](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaEhEaDQUDA) – Louis Armstrong**  

The house reminds Ichabod of ones he saw during the war, musty and silent but with everything laid out as if the owners expected to return at any moment. Back then, the residents had likely fled due to the fighting or been driven from their homes by the victors. In this particular house, the abandonment was fairly recent—not even long enough for water on the stove to boil away. That’s encouraging. He and Abbie are getting closer.

He hears a melody coming from a room upstairs, too soft and indistinct to identify, and motions to Abbie that he’ll take the second floor. If there’s a chance the demon left someone alive or left the music playing as a clue, they need to take it.

Someone had left an iPod hooked to a pair of speakers in their home office. (He’s seen the same arrangement in Abbie’s parlour.) It switches tracks almost as soon as he steps inside. The new piece is of moderate speed, a trumpet leading with an off-beat melody and other instruments he can’t identify echoing it. The tune catches his ear and nearly catches his feet, and Ichabod pushes it to the back of his mind. In a happier situation, he’d pay attention, but right now he needs to look for clues.

Like the mug dropped beside the desk and the brown liquid staining the carpet. No one would drop coffee without mopping it up. Most people running for their lives would take the coffee with them, out of sheer forgetfulness. A startled person might have released the mug, but there’s no indication of a struggle within the room. The only possible conclusion is that the person holding the mug vanished between one second and the next, which means—

Good _Lord_. How did that man ever get himself recorded with a voice like _that_?

**4.[Come Together](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKdJsGLK-NA) – The Beatles**

It’s two in the morning, and Jenny’s tending Abbie’s stab wound in the back of Captain Irving’s car. Ichabod is in the front passenger seat. He’s in no great shape himself, of course, but Abbie is, Abbie is….. Jenny has better field medical training than anyone of his acquaintance, past or present. Abbie will be her usual acerbic self in no time.

The fourth time Ichabod turns in his seat, Irving groans.

“I think we could all do with some music,” Irving says, and flicks on the music player. 

Ichabod has grown used to songs that start strongly, leading with the melody or at least with a hard beat that lends itself to dancing. This song is different, its opening more background than anything else, and that alone catches his ear. And then the vocals start.

“ _Here come old flat top, he come groovin’ up slowly….”_

The lyrics remind him of a fever dream, almost but not quite understandable, and the writer had either little command of the English language or little command of his wits. It’s the only possible explanation for “toe jam football” and “he one spinal cracker”. 

And then, finally: “How can someone invisible be attractive?!”

In the back seat, Abbie starts laughing in pained gasps. Jenny and Irving join in a moment later, and then Ichabod because he’s taken frivolities seriously again, hasn’t he?

**5.[Girls Just Want to Have Fun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dz3OZuxatg) – Cyndi Lauper**

The hallway leading to Abbie’s apartment is vibrating. At first, Ichabod credits this to a machine, possibly for cleaning, because the vibrations are too rhythmic to be violence. Then, once he’s neared Abbie’s door, he realizes that the vibrations are music. Very _loud_ music. Louder than he’s used to from Abbie. And Jenny doesn’t seem the type for music at all.

Ichabod knocks. After a minute, he knocks again, louder and with more firmness. After another minute, he tries the door handle. It turns and the door swings open.

Abbie is in the middle of her living room holding a large plastic spoon in front of her chin, and she is bouncing in time to the music. She appears to be silently mimicking the singer, a particularly perky woman who apparently doesn’t think women should engage in serious pursuits. Interesting bit of propaganda, that. It explains a lot about what Abbie derisively called “the media”.

Abbie’s vague attempt at dancing turns her, finally, towards the door. She sees Ichabod and stops, fumbling in the pocket of her jeans. A moment later, the music clicks off and the silence is both welcome and deafening.

“No need to explain,” says Ichabod. “We all need to relax somehow.”

**+1.[Betrayal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydDjL_46-oA) – Nightshade**

Ichabod is sitting at Abbie’s desk, leafing through a grimoire, when his partner places a small parcel in front of him. It’s wrapped in shiny blue foil and tied with a large gold ribbon. Ichabod closes the book to peer at it the better.

“Is today another national holiday?” he asks. 

“You woke up in that cave exactly a year ago,” Abbie says. “Thought you should have something to celebrate making it this far.”

A year. It does not feel that long, and yet it also feels longer. When did he lose track of the days?

Ichabod looks at the gift again, and back up to Abbie.

“I’m afraid I did not buy you something in return,” he says. “I apologise.”

Abbie smiles. “There’s still time.”

It’s an iPod, already loaded with music. Ichabod scrolls through the playlists, helpfully arranged by what appears to be genre and decade, then thumbs back to the top of the list, which says START HERE. Abbie’s watching him intently, so he smiles and makes a show of putting the miniature speakers in his ears because _of course_ he knows how to do that. He’s not a fool. 

The guitars at the beginning aren’t bad, for all that they’re modified and electric. Then a voice begins and Ichabod cannot tear the speakers from his ears fast enough. A demon! In the iPod or the music or the precinct, it’s hard to say, but there was infernal chanting. He’s heard it before. 

He flings the iPod away from him and is going for the holy water when a sound breaks through his panic. Abbie is laughing. That was no demon, then, merely a prank. Ichabod feels his face colouring and thinks, “There’s still time.”

**Author's Note:**

> I started this about halfway through season one, to rectify a gap in the Ichabod Explores Modern Times genre. I think the gap's been kind of filled since, but ah well. I think I've been doing more dithering over this fic than actually writing it.
> 
> Thanks to my betas Sudo and [Flamebyrd](http://archiveofourown.org/users/flamebyrd).


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